Guyver: A Zeppo
by Lt. Cmdr. Radner
Summary: Halloween and the costume shop is out of army rifles so what is a cheapo slacker like Xander to do? Help the not so kindly shop owner get rid of a rather bulky costume for a small fee.


Guyver: Zeppo Tale

A/n: For those of you who keep track of my stories I currently have three out right now that aren't finished (damn muse). Also I'm currently betaing a story as well as gearing up for finals. However I have had time to read and have come across several Zeppo stories involving the famous or infamous depending on your point of viewHalloween ep of Buffy. So I decided to join the throng with my own one shot that I might do more with later on. So here it is.

Disclaimer: This is a crossover with MY Guyver AU, characters are mine concepts aren't. Anything Buffy related belongs to Joss and our friends at Mutant Enemy.

Summery: Halloween and the costume shop is out of army rifles so what is a cheapo slacker like Xander to do? Help the (not so) kindly shop owner get rid of a rather bulky costume for a small fee.

* * *

"Damn" was all Xander could say as the a ten year old kid grabbed the last of them from the bin. This Halloween was turning out to be a bust, Buffy had her regal noble woman dress and Willow was once again going ghost. Xander, being tight of pocket as most teenagers are, only had some old army fatigues that would make aperfect costume, if he only had a rifle to go with it. 

"Looking for something specific?" asked the shop keeper in a rather kind British drawl.

"I was but…" said Xander resignedly. "you're out of what I was looking forand I'm rather short on cash to pay foranything else."

"Tight of pocket you say, perhaps you can help me" said the shop owner as an idea came to him and led our kindly Zeppo to the back of the shop.

There in a display case was the strangest costume Xander had ever seen. It was a brownish green color with an insect like face with a metal orb protruding out of the forehead along with two smaller ones that ran along track around the top of the head, a long horn like spike arched out of the top of the so called helmet of the costume,and two more spikes extended out like swords at each elbow. It looked almost demon like in appearence that was reminiscent of Batman or some other rather dark avenger. 

"I was traveling through Taurus Bay when I came across it, the costume is said to be a replica of abeingthat protects the city called the Guyver, some say its a demon of some sort born out of a great miscarage of justice, how ever most believe its an alien of all things. Any way the man who made sold it to me cheap, soI bought it hoping to make a pretty penny on resale or rental, but so far the thing has just sat here collecting dust never worn, no one wants to be stuck wearing something so bulky onHalloweenand personallyI'm tired of lugging the thing around. You would be doing me a favor by buying it and I'd of course be willing to sell it at discount" said the shopkeeper rather casually.

Seeing the imitating costume was all Xander needed to be hooked but at the words small price. Xander came back to earth with a rough bump, "I don't know, those spike look like they make it hard to move around with out gouging someone's eye" said Xander trying to sound reluctant to buy.

"Not to worry, this is in fact one of the more impressive aspects of the costume" said the shopkeeper and with a quick movement produced the keys to the case and opened it and pulled out one of the leather like gauntlets and pressed a hidden button on the wrist. With a snap the blade retracted leaving only the very tip exposed while the rest was hidden in a compartment between the costume's layers. "The person who designed it wanted it to be as close to real as possible and lets face it a set of long swords comming out of ones elbow tends to draw a crowd. If you're interested in it, I'd be willing to let this thing go for as little as ten…"

"Sold" said Xander pulling out a ten from his wallet and handing it to the shopkeeper.

Ethan Rayne smiled roguishly as the young Zeppo left the shop with the bulky costume in tow. "The chaos that costume wouldl reign on Halloween will be sweet indeed" he said with a rather evil chuckle. With that he returned to work helping costumers pick out their particular poisons that would infect them come Halloween.

* * *

"Xander, where did you get that!" exclaimed Buffy's mom on Halloween when Xander showed up in full costume. 

"You like, got it cheep from the new costume shop in town figure it'll keep the kiddies scared enough from misbehaving tonight" said Xander as he pulled off the Helmet like head piece of the costume.

"Hail the mighty Xander: Alien Super Knight" said Buffy as she came downstairs in her regal gown and her hair hidden under the black wig she now wore; fallowed by Willow in her typical ghost costume that covered her from head to foot.

"Oh yeah ruin the line I had all planned out with a rooky one of your own Buff" said Xander with mock annoyance. "And it is not alien super knight; its called a Guyver, or at least that's what the guy at the shop called it" who proceeded to replace the head piece completely concealing his face.

"Guyver, shymiver what's the diff; lets justget going before Snyder decides that being late is an expendable offence" said Buffy with a laugh.

"As tempting as that sounds I paid for this costume and plan to use it" with that he grasped the door and pulled it open and bowed low, "after you lady Buffy of Buffstonia." With another laugh the trio headed out toward Sunnydale High not realizing the amount of trouble they were now gettinginto.

* * *

"Crap…someone get me the license plate of the Zoanoid that just used me as a punching bag" said Mack as he came to. He shook his head trying to clear out the cobwebs that now addled his brain. As his vision cleared he saw that he was in fact surrounded by what looked like mini Zoanoids. "What the hell" was all he could say when one of the little beasts took a swipe at him and howled in pain as the bio armor of the Guyver took the brunt of the shot, wasting no more time he stretched out with his enhanced senses and tried to get his bearing and figure out where the hell he was. 

"Xander, oh god Xander what's going on?" Mack turned to find a red head not much older then him standing just behind him wearing a rather revealing outfit. He quickly shook his head clean of the thoughts that were beginning to develop, the last thing he need was Dana pissed off at him, and why the hell was she calling him Xander.

"Sorry miss, you must have me confused with someone else" said Mack briskly.

The girls face fell in a mix of panic and horro, "Oh no it got you too" she cried. "Okay listen to me, your name is Xander Harris, you're a student of Sunnydale High with me your best friend Willow, you dressed as a Guyver for Halloween and now you well…"

"You're not serious?" asked Mack rather scathingly.

"I'm being very serious" said the girl who made to punch Mack in the arm; which ended passing though him as if it was nothing but smoke and vapor.

"Oh god" said Mack Backing up slightly. "Stay right there" he said commandingly. He quickly shut his eyes behind his mask and retracted the armor. Willow gasped as the thin tendrils that made up the Guyver armor uncoiled and retracted back into the base of his neck leaving only the host that now stood before him. When Mack opened his eyes he rushed to the nearest house and looked his reflection in the window panes, the face that looked back wasn't his. He could suddenly feel a flood of memories that weren't his flood his mind. The Guyver quickly went to work separating and containing the new memories and transferring them to the Guyver group consciousness where they wouldn't cause too much trouble for him. He then proceeded toreactivated the armor so as to not get this Xander in trouble for parading around in boxers and a tee shirt.

* * *

"How the hell did this happen" said Mack rejoined his host's friend Willow. 

"I don't know and I'm really sorry that you got caught up in all of this but right now we have to find Buffy then head for some place safe and call Giles. More then likely he can figure out what happened and tell us how to stop this?" said Willow who began to head down the street trying to look as inconspicous as possible and Mack fallowning behind her.

"Two things whose Buffy and who or what is a Giles?" asked Mack.

"Glad to see you still have your sense of humor, Giles is kinda like our mentor, our answer man, something wiggy goes down he usually has the answer on how to stop it, and he's also Buffy's watcher, she's the slayer" said Willow casually as they turned a corner.

"Slayer, as in Vampire Slayer, as in one girl chosen in each generation to fight evil, slayer" said Mack rambling slightly.

"How do you know about that?" asked Willow so amazed that she didn't realize that she passed through a telephone pole.

"Short version, guy who gave this armor is rather long lived as has lots of old connections, especially with the Council of Watchers. He helped to found it and still maintains a dialog with them incase they stumble on to something that they shouldn't get involved in" said Mack rather ominously .as the two rushed up the street avoiding the transformed kiddies who now terrorized the remaining normal humans

"Whoa, the guy you got your armor from helped to found the Watchers, the guy has to be hundreds of years old" said Willow starting to babble when she got nervous.

"5,320 years old to be exact, he goanna be 5,321 next April, do you think they have cards that go that high or do ya think I'd have to preorder one?" asked Mack as the pair rounded the corner.

"And what exactly are you guys involved in that the Council wouldn't need to be informed about?" asked Willow as they hid in a side alley to avoid a pack of vampire kiddies.

"What I deal with, would make the things that go bump in the night cry andr un home to their mommies, some the things I've seen would scare even the Slayer" said Mack as they exited out the back of the alley on to one of Sunnydale's many suburban streets.

Willow was about to remark with something that sounded like disbelief when she spotted Buffy standing in front of a sprinkler, "Buffy!" cried Willow as the pair rushed across the street and joined the bewildered looking girl who looked like a deer caught in the headlights.

"Who are you, where am I, this isn't Boston, I was supposed to be at the governor's mansion for the gala welcoming home for the troops…" said the girl who began to babble as bad as Willow.

"If she's the Slayer then I'm Santa Claus" said Mack ignoring the stream of inane babble coming from the girl's mouth.

"She is, but she dressed as a noble woman…"

"…and got whammied by what ever got me in your friend's body" said Mack finishing Willow's sentence. "So what's the plan?"

"Okay first we need to get off the street and indoors then you need to call Giles…"

Wait, why do I need to call Giles" interrupted Mack.

"Hello ghost here" said Willow passing her hand through Mack.

"Right, we get indoors, I call Giles, then what?" asked Mack feeling like a doofus.

"Uhh, that's kinda where I stopped planning" said Willow.

"Right, then lets just get our assesoff the streetbefore something big and ugly decides it's wants us for dinner" said Mack. With Williow in the lead, Mackgrabbed Buffy by the hand and dragged her off in the direction of her mom's house.

* * *

Mack leaned his head against the stairwell in the Summers' home, his head feeling like an over enthusiastic golfer had taken whacks at his head with a Nine Iron. Xander had thankfully kept a spare set of clothes here incase something happened, clothes that Mack now wore. 

The Guyver could sustain any human indefinetly but was bulky and tend to suffacate a person if they weren't used to it. Needless to say it wasn't the bet thing to wear when one wanted to think.

"Let's recap, I'm in the body of a slacker high school student that lives on a Hellmouth, he's best friends with the Slayer who is currently acting like real brat, his other friend is currently sufferingfrom being all incorporeal, the Slayer's boyfriend is a Vampire with a soul, and the current Queen of Bitchiness is dressed as a cat and is freaking out because Buffy ain't home. All the while we are barricading ourselves in so as to avoid the little semi-demons/children who are terrorizing the town. Yeah I'm in hell or as close to it as I can get" he said to himself.

"Trouble dealing with the reality of all this?" asked Angle as he exited the kitchen.

"Dealing isn't the issue, it's the not doing anything about it that's killing me, did the Watcher say what he was planning on doing to fix this?" Mack asked the former Scourge of Europe.

"Stay put, said he had an idea of who was behind all this especially when Willow told him that the place they got their costumes from was called Ethan's" he said casually.

Mack sighed he had been graitful to find Angle arriving at the house just as they did, personally he didn't want to have to deal with a nosey Watcher. "If Benny where here, I'd have bet good money that he's the ass behind this whole mess, probably would've cleaned up too" said Mack with a chuckle, Benny had told him that Watchers were a fussy lot and tended to give more wieght to tradition then to changing times, one of the reasons why he kept contact with them to a minimum.

Mack was shaken from his memories when a freshset of screams emanated from the kitchen, with out as much as a word the two tourtured heroes raced back to the kitchen hoping to hold off what ever it was that threatened the three woman.

* * *

"Damn vamp, should know better then to put on their game faces when someone doesn't expect it" Mack muttered to himself as he raced after a panicked Slayer, his senses fully enhanced by the Guyver. When he finally tracked her down, the sight wasn't pretty. The Slayer was out on the ground while a peroxide blonde male vampire and a hoard of semi-demons were trying to decide how best to deal with her, beat her to the point of death or just to eat her and be done with it.

"Goldilocks, didn't your sire teach you not to play with your food" called Mack trying to get the vamps attention.

"Well, look what we have here, a Zeppo appetizer. I'll enjoy draining you sidekick, then I'll have a go at miss not so chosen one here" said Spike with a sickening laugh.

"Please, I'd stop you before you even got you're game face out" said Mack sarcastically.

"Cocky little runt aren't we, look around I got a whole bleeding army behind me, what do you have? A ghost and a bleeding heart ponce. Just who do you think you are to stop me?" said Spike his game face out strutting slightly at his apparent victory.

Mack smiled, the moment he spoke he had begun the second nature technique to quiet his mind and allow his subconscious to rise to the surface. His smile cracked into a menacing grin that startled the vamp slightly. "Who am I? I'll tell you, I AM THE GUYVER!" and with that all kinds of hell broke loose.

* * *

Ethan looked up at his once good friend Giles, no Ripper and chuckled. His lip was bleeding, he had swallowed two fillings, and more then likely had three cracked ribs and the starts of a black eye.

"I won't ask again Ethan; how do I undo your spell?" asked Giles with an unnatural calm to his voice as he polished his glasses. The middle aged Watcher seemed to be holding out on any further beatings until he got an answer, at least one that he liked.

Ethan sighed, the only two ways out where telling him or in an ambulance. "Statue of Janus, in the back" he said hoarsely. Giles replaced his glasses and quickly moved to the back of the shop with a baseball bat in hand ready to destroy the cursed object and release them from this hell.

* * *

To say Spike was pissed would be a bloody understatement, no he down right mad. The Guyver what ever the hell that was had knocked aside most of his men as if they were nothing more then rodents. None of them where dead just passed out, now the two of them were trading blows with each other neither giving an inch. Each hit his gave felt as if he was punching a steel wall.

Then he felt something pass through the air, energy of some sort and saw the Guyver stagger slightly. Spike smiled in a ruthless feral like way, his revenge had come.

* * *

"No, not now, not yet!" cried Mack as he struggled to remained linked to Xander. If he left so did the Guyver and any chance of him surviving.

"I can't leave him unprotected" said Mack to himself. Utilizing all he had learned from his sensei about meditation and from Benny about the Guyver he imparted some of himself in to Xander, a copy of the Guyver he carried, the instinct, the link to the knowledge of Guyvers past, and most of all a copy of all he had learned up to that point about Kronos and the Zoanoids.

"I impart a portion of a great existence to you Xander Harris, you will see things few have ever dreamed of, my hope is that the future I have given you is better then the one you were going to get" said Mack and unable to hold on any longer left Xander's body and returned to Taurus Bay.

Spike knocked Xander back to the ground and laughed as the Zeppo crawled back away from him not noticing that the demos around him where becoming kids again. It wasn't until Spike saw Xander pull off the Guyver helmet that he realized his problem.

"Having fun Spike?" asked Buffy as pulled off her wig and stood behind the vampire waiting for him to turn around.

"Bloody hell," was all that Spike had time to say before his second beating of the night began.

* * *

Xander entered school the fallowing Monday after Halloween, tired groggy and plagued with strange dreams. Warriors, fighting several vicious beasts that looked like men, a being of white light saying "that he was no longer like mortal men", and someone called Mack Radner, saying something about a new destiny. Xander rubbed his neck grazing the two tumor-like bumps that now his just below his hairline on the back of his neck and felt them pulse slightly.

Suddenly his senses opened up in a wave of intensity. His eyes were sharper then they had ever been before, he could taste the antiseptic in the air that the school used to clean the floors and walls with. He could smell and distinguish the multitude of odors that now ran wild even different types of BO.

"What happened to me?" Xander asked himself. His mind flashed and he saw the Guyver armor before him. Not the plastic one like he wore for Halloween but a real living one with the glowing orb in the forehead and menacing eyes and elongated spike like swords.

"You have evolved" it said in a voice much like Xander's. In that moment the Zeppo knew his life would never be the same.

A/n: Phew, finished my first one shot, I must say that I liked doing this. My muse is now satisfied and hopefully will let me get back to work on my other stories. I may do more with this one day but for now it's a one shot but if I get some reviews I might do more. Also if any one is interested I'm in need of a new beta email or pm me if interested (I'm desperate). Catch ya all on the flip side.


End file.
